A geographic information system (GIS) is a system for archiving, retrieving, and manipulating data that has been stored and indexed according to the geographic coordinates of its elements. The system generally can utilize a variety of data types, such as imagery, maps, and tables. One company involved in geographic information systems is ESRI, which maintains a website at www.gis.com that includes background information on conventional geographic information systems.
Generally, conventional geographic information systems have limited usefulness in both their overall functionality and user interface. For example, any information search capabilities present in conventional GIS and distributed geographic information systems (DGIS) have historically required a user to disambiguate the nature of a search request, selecting search scopes like “address search” or “lot number search” as either an explicit component of the search process or implicitly by allowing only a single scope (most often “address”) within which all search requests are interpreted. In this sense, conventional GIS are effectively hardwired to search and use particular kinds of information.
What is needed, therefore, are geographic information systems that provide users with a greater degree of flexibility, utility, and information.